Quick Answers / 'Newbie' Questions

How come the ai is usually nice to other AI and not to the human?

I saw Augustus attack me mercilessly with other AI allies in one game and then in the other game, Augustus attacks Napoleon and takes Lyons, Paris and capitulation from Napoleon. Why does that happen?

There are some hidden modifiers that apply only to the relations between AI leaders. For one, each leader has a "peace weight" value. If their peace weights are similar, leaders tend to like each other, and vice versa. Augustus has one of the highest peace weights: 8 (Gandhi has 10); Napoleon has the lowest possible peace weight (0). This results in a mutual hidden penalty of -4. E.g. the values shown in the Foreign Advsior screen could add up to +1, and the resulting attitude would still be "annoyed" (attitudes are displayed correctly). Not sure if that's a sufficient explanation for the AI behavior in your games.

At Noble difficulty and higher, human players also gets -1 to all relations.

The AI also can't capitulate the human, so unless you can get a peace deal one way or another, they will keep smashing your stuff, while in the other example you mentioned, Augustus capitulated Napoleon when he had had enough.

Right I have searched the Civilopedia but as usual it is a bit scant on the real dope.


I still don't have the best idea how this building really works.

I get that the Pireas of Athens will generate 4 more


How much will Susa generate?


And how much more, if any will Circassia generate?


Basically I need to know what the formula in the /XML_buildings/ is to get the most out of the +50% bonus.
Does the trade routes get added together and then multiplied by .50 or multiplied individually and then added together?

Any other Ideas or suggestions on how to best use the harbour are also welcome as I am assembling a small file on the various uses of all the buildings as I Know I can make better use of most of them.

I have already started using the synergy between Harbours and the Great Light House

My next building I will research is the Spiral Minaret as I often build it to boost my economy but don't know the ins and outs of how it works properly either.

Not sure about the exact formula either, except that Harbours often make little sense to build. It's actually not +50% of the final you see, however, so I highly doubt it would result in +4 in Athens. It's a +50% multiplier on top of the others. And you get multipliers for connection to capital, staying at peace with other AIs, the size of the city, etc. The +50% isn't on top of the final output, but in addition to these others. This means that often you get no boost at all (in the beginning with few and poor trade routes), so the building does nothing, or you get +1-3 . Not a lot.

The benefit, if you can call it that with such a relatively poor building, is that you get the boost to rather than , so you get the multipliers on top, but that is only if you actually get extra from the building to begin with. I usually don't build harbours or customs houses, but they can be good in big coastal cities, and of course there is the added too.

If you install BUG and hover over the building icon then you will see exactly how much every building adds. Very, very useful, so I highly recommend you try it out. There are many other benefits too, as basically every screen in the game offers more information than the default game.

Addendum.

Here is a picture from a size 21 city in the end game, that doesn't have a harbour.



Not a great deal as you can see. The +50% will get added on top of the others you see in the above screenshot, and the Dakyanus trade route already have +180%, so another 50% won't do a great deal.

I think the +50% works on each individual trade route btw, so in this example you would probably get +1 per trade route.

Hi all,
I was wondering if there was a thread for joining multiplayer games? I am relatively new to Civ 4 and whenever I visit the lobby all the games are password protected.

Wow! Once again leading the charge to good advice
That is so useful to know! looks like I need big cities or International trade, from Astronomy? to make the Harbours to pay off in a reasonable time.

Man bug is breaking it down route by route that is so cool.
Thanks Bug team
Looks like the calculation is multiplied by route rounded and then added to total

I thought that By building The Great Light House I could provide a nice boost to my economy with the two extra but unless they connect to capital cities or especially overseas cities it is not going to add up too much until late in the game, probably about the time it obsoletes at corporations.

Anyone with a good idea on making the best use of Harbours

I am currently playing Vanilla 1.61
I thought about patching to 1.71 changing out the DLL and running the Hall of Fame Bug mod (Buffy) but the instructions were a bit daunting and had bad grammar and spelling mistakes so I figured I would give it a pass for a while but seeing this use for Bug is making me think of backing up my Civ directory and giving it a whirl

treetrunkarms said:

Hi all,
I was wondering if there was a thread for joining multiplayer games? I am relatively new to Civ 4 and whenever I visit the lobby all the games are password protected.

Click to expand...

Yes there is a Multi-player thread I browsed it once for light reading after reading the last 300 posts of this thread.
It was a bunch of folks sledging game-spy and trying to hook up games. As I only play Multi-player direct linked at home. I got sleepy and had to go play an exciting Ice age scenario teams game to wake up.
But the thread is out there and TMIT, EliteTroops or The guy with the blocky minecraft looking avatar who's name escapes me at the moment will be along to direct you shortly.
You could also try the thread search tool to the top right of the posts by the rating stars. Use from the top level of the forum threads

No problem

BUG is very useful for all sorts of information, so I would recommend to install it. I assume it works on vanilla too, but I haven't played that so don't know for sure. You can install BUG to customAssets, and then it will work for all your games, even if you try saves that isn't played with BUG.

The Great Lighthouse is still a great wonder (heh), at least if you have many coastal cities. 2 extra trade routes for every coastal city is huge early in the game, when commerce tends to be hard to come by. It's a big boost to your economy. Kind of sucks that is obsoletes at Corporations, but that is far into the tech tree after all, so it will last a long time.

On spelling, it does my head in that a worrying amount of people on this forum write capitol instead of capital. They are two very different things.

Pangaea said:

On spelling, it does my head in that a worrying amount of people on this forum write capitol instead of capital. They are two very different things.

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Yes, even I know witch is witch ^^ .

Pangaea said:

BUG is very useful for all sorts of information, so I would recommend to install it. I assume it works on vanilla too, but I haven't played that so don't know for sure. You can install BUG to customAssets, and then it will work for all your games, even if you try saves that isn't played with BUG.

Click to expand...

The "B" in BUG stands for BtS; it only works on BTS. I think there may have been a WUG (Warlords) version, but Lemon Merchant would know.

Don't recall how this works, so here I am.

If you gift missionaries to an AI in Theocracy, with a different religion than your missionaries, can he still spread it, or will they auto-fail?

Pangaea said:

Don't recall how this works, so here I am.

If you gift missionaries to an AI in Theocracy, with a different religion than your missionaries, can he still spread it, or will they auto-fail?

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In the most recent update, they will spread it.

Samson said:

In the most recent update, they will spread it.

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Sounds good, thanks. Maybe I'll be able to change his evil religious ways after all then

Pangaea said:

Don't recall how this works, so here I am.

If you gift missionaries to an AI in Theocracy, with a different religion than your missionaries, can he still spread it, or will they auto-fail?

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Sure! Theocracy only prevents those damn forigners spreading their benighted faithI It's fine if we do it!

My favorite method of spreading.
Set a rally point in your rivals nearest tile and just press the prezzie button when they pop up in the unit que less micro more fun. Occasionally they hang on to a Missionary for a turn of two I think it is caused by two being in the same city. Just have to remember to stop sending once his cities are all converted.

Also they count to the gifting relations total so proselytizing a big empire might raise your relations.

Juicy (if pricy) decoys if You get unexpectedly DoWed

Great AI logic for the win
Yo Dave we at war with dem christian fraeks?
Yep Bubba, we are Why?
Because there one of dem Preist guys ova dere
Well well well Bubba He is worth like 60 hammers what say you and me go 'n shake some overflow gold outa him?
Der Dave ain't we like s'posed to dig in here an guard de fort like?
Ah sure Bubba it will be fine guarding itself for a turn or so.
< And so Bubba 'n Dave go over "dere" and wring some shiny outa the priest>
Err Dave?
Yes Bubba.
Our guys don't got like big crosses on der' shields like?
No way they don't! we buddists so no crosses! Err why Bubba?
Because a whole passel of dem Knights over dere burning de fort do Dave!

Harbors are good buildings. The commerce boost isn't the only benefit, but also +3 health. On average, you should be able to get +3 to both health and commerce from them, the latter being as good as a free specialist but minus the GP points.

bhavv said:

Harbors are good buildings. The commerce boost isn't the only benefit, but also +3 health. On average, you should be able to get +3 to both health and commerce from them, the latter being as good as a free specialist but minus the GP points.

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Harbours are good buildings, if the is needed, the bonus on the :commmerce: of TRs otoh is only a small advantage and rarely matters at all. If people say harbours are bad for their games, it's because they keep their cities small, which often is best in Domination and Conquest games, and therefore don't need the . I've played various Spaceraces or Time-Victories where I built Harbours in many coastal cities. They're usually not as good as a Grocer, though their cheaper price can even make them more attractive than the latter, especially if one can run 100% without problems, because then, the benefit of the Grocer is non-existent while the small benefit of the Harbour is a gain.

Your comparison for a Free Specialist I cannot follow though. For a Harbour to give +3 , various circumstances need to be met. I know of various situations in which a harbour would have given me +0 or +1 , and as written, the is not needed at all in certain types of games (in those, even +3 wouldn't matter) . The harbour is a very situational building that profits mostly from when big-cities are advantageous.

I understood how you ment that comment about the Free Specialist.

You can't compare harbours like that, because the great thing about a Free Specialist, is that he's free. A harbour has a cost, and needs to pay back before the round ends, otherwise, it's a fail-build. You need to divert the cost of the harbour (in ) through the benefit of the harbour (in and maybe also in ) , then you get the number of turns until it has payed back.

The most important though is, to compare the build to its opportunity cost, so if you i. e. could build a unit, and that unit gets you a city, you shouldn't build the harbour, because a city gives you way more than the harbour. If you can build a Grocer and don't run a 100% slider, compare the you get through the Grocer with the you get from the harbour, then compare the cost of both, done. Also consider how much running a Specialist instead of growing and an additional tile or another Specialist gives, it's often better to build less because it makes one win earlier. Trying to build something because the player thinks "benefit " is one of the major faults of the new players. CIV is a game of tradeoffs, there's almost no benefit that doesn't have another benefit that would otherwise be available.

Ok, so I'm playing as the Americans, rolled a start where I choose to found my capitol on a PH. I went against normal routine and built a warrior first. Before finishing said warrior I stumbled upon Brennus seeing he was close by, decided on not building a worker, but producing warriors to take his capitol. 3 warriors which adds up to 24 turns. Luck was a lady letting my remove Brennus from the game using the 3 produced warriors plus the starting warrior. As the game progressed, I encountered all the other civs. The last civ I made contact with is the Carthaginians. To my surprise Hannibal, the farthest and most isolated leader says I declared war on his friend. I open the WB, and counted 32 tiles between the Celtic capitol and the Carthage capitol. In order for a civ to regard you negatively, for Dow on a friend they must have contact? So I find it extremely unlikely that Brennus and Hannibal could meet each other in such a short period of time. I do recognize that their units could make contact, but still am puzzled. Are there any diplo mechanics I'm not considering?